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This is about the direction; for other uses, see North (disambiguation).

Compass rose with north highlighted and at top

North is one of the four cardinal directions, specifically the direction that, in Western culture, is treated as the fundamental direction: Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... // North may mean: North - a cardinal direction The North (Union (American Civil War)), U.S. states that remained loyal to the Union or states that had abolished slavery North Africa - a region in the north of the continent of Africa North America - a continent in the western hemisphere. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... A common compass rose as is found on a nautical chart showing both true and magnetic north with magnetic declination A compass rose is a figure displaying the orientation of the cardinal directions, north, south, east and west on a map or nautical chart. ... Cardinal point redirects here. ... For this articles equivalent regarding the East, see Eastern culture. ...

• North is used (explicitly or implicitly) to define all other directions.
• The (visual) top edges of maps usually correspond to the northern edge of the area represented, unless explicitly stated otherwise or landmarks are considered more useful for that territory than specific directions.

For other uses, see Map (disambiguation). ... For the group sometimes known as Landmark, see Landmark Education Originally, a landmark literally meant a geographic feature, used by explorers and others to find their way back through an area on a return trip. ...

Definitions

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North can mean: Image File history File links Broom_icon. ...

1. true north, the direction along the earth's surface toward one pole of the earth's rotation, namely the pole that is clearly on one's left when standing at the Equator while facing the rising sun.
2. magnetic north, the direction along the earth's surface in which horizontal magnetic field strength has its most positive value (but the eventual next "flipping" of the magnetic poles, perhaps in a few thousand years, implies this awkward wording: "the north magnetic pole will later lie in the southern hemisphere".)
3. a loosely specified direction, usually within half a right angle of true north, especially when stating travel instructions in an area where directions of travel are constrained by an approximately rectangular grid of streets, hallways, etc.; this is often called 'grid north' or 'plan north'.
4. the orientation of a traveller with respect to a visible or otherwise definite continuous two-way route, such that sustained travel over the whole of the route produces a change of position to a location further north, even if that involves travelling a part of the route in another direction, even straight south; often termed "northbound".
5. pertaining to the part of a route mainly or exclusively used by northbound traffic, where southbound traffic is separated by barriers, or where both are encouraged to stay mostly in one portion by Rules of the road; often termed "northbound".
6. used euphemistically to refer to the direction of travel toward a goal, such as in football, the direction toward the opponents goal is north, and when players are moving crossways and not making progress toward the goal, they are said to be moving "east-west".

True Pizza is a navigational term referring to the direction of the North Pole relative to the navigators position. ... World map showing the equator in red In tourist areas, the equator is often marked on the sides of roads The equator marked as it crosses Ilhéu das Rolas, in São Tomé and Príncipe. ... This is about the geographic meaning of North Pole. ... Recent geomagnetic reversals. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ...

Etymology

The word north is traced to the Old High German nord, and the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "left" (or "under"). (Presumably a natural primitive description of its concept is "to the left of the rising sun".) Etymologies redirects here. ... The (Late Old High) German speaking area of the Holy Roman Empire around 950. ... The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. ...

Latin borealis is from Greek boreas "north wind, north", in mythology (according to Ovid) personified as the son of the river-god Strymon, and father of Calais and Zetes; septentrionalis is from septentriones, "the seven plow oxen", a name of Ursa Maior. Greek arktikos "northern" is named for the same constellation (c.f. Arctic). There was one person and one god known as Boreas in Greek mythology. ... For other uses, see Ovid (disambiguation) Publius Ovidius Naso (March 20, 43 BC – 17 AD) was a Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid who wrote on topics of love, abandoned women and mythological transformations. ... The Struma (Bulgarian: Струма, Greek: Strimonis, Turkish: Karasu (meaning black water in Turkish)) is a river in Bulgaria and Greece. ... Ursa Major is a constellation visible throughout the year in the northern hemisphere. ... For the ships, see USS Arctic, SS Arctic, MV Arctic The red line indicates the 10°C isotherm in July, sometimes used to define the Arctic region border Artificially coloured topographical map of the Arctic region The Arctic is the region around the Earths North Pole, opposite the Antarctic...

Magnetic north and declination

Magnetic north is of interest because it is the direction indicated as north on a properly functioning (but uncorrected) magnetic compass. The difference between it and true north is called the magnetic declination (or simply the declination where the context is clear). For many purposes and physical circumstances, the error in direction that results from ignoring the distinction is tolerable; in others a mental or instrument compensation, based on assumed knowledge of the applicable declination, can solve all the problems. But simple generalizations on the subject should be treated as unsound, and as likely to reflect popular misconceptions about terrestrial magnetism. This is about the geographic meaning of North Pole. ... Magnetic declination. ... Earths magnetic field (the surface magnetic field) is approximately a magnetic dipole, with one pole near the geographic north pole and the other near the geographic south pole. ...

Roles of north as prime direction

The visible rotation of the night sky about the visible celestial pole provides a vivid metaphor of that direction corresponding to up. Thus the choice of the north as corresponding to up in the northern hemisphere, or of south in that role in the southern, is, prior to world-wide communication, anything but an arbitrary one. On the contrary, it is of interest that Chinese culture even considered south as the proper top end for maps. The two celestial poles are the imaginary points where the Earths spin axis intersects the imaginary rotating sphere of gigantic radius, called the celestial sphere. ... Northern hemisphere highlighted in yellow. ...

In Western culture:

• Up is a metaphor for north
• Maps tend to be drawn for viewing with either true north or magnetic north at the top
• Globes of the earth have the North Pole at the top, or if the earth's axis is represented as inclined from vertical (normally by the angle it has relative to the axis of the earth's orbit), in the top half.
• Maps are usually labelled to indicate which direction on the map corresponds to a direction on the earth,
  • usually with a single arrow oriented to the map's representation of true north,
  • occasionally with a single arrow oriented to the map's representation of magnetic north, or two arrows oriented to true and magnetic north respectively,
  • occasionally with a compass rose, but if so, usually on a map with north at the top and usually with north decorated more prominently than any other compass point.

The notion that north should always be up and east at the right was established by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. The historian Daniel Boorstin suggests This article is about a spherical model of the Earth, or similar. ... A common compass rose as is found on a nautical chart showing both true and magnetic north with magnetic declination A compass rose is a figure displaying the orientation of the cardinal directions, north, south, east and west on a map or nautical chart. ... This article is about the geographer, mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy. ... Categories: People stubs | 1914 births | 2004 deaths | American writers | Rhodes scholars | Pulitzer Prize winners | Librarians of Congress ...

Perhaps this was because the better-known places in his world were in the northern hemisphere, and on a flat map these were most convenient for study if they were in the upper right-hand corner.

Roles of east and west as inherently subsidiary directions

While the choice of north over south as prime direction reflects quite arbitrary historical factors, east and west are not nearly as natural alternatives as first glance might suggest. Their folk definitions are, respectively, "where the sun rises" and "where it sets". Except on the Equator, however, these definitions, taken together, would imply that

• east and west would not be 180 degrees apart, but instead would differ from that by up to twice the degrees of latitude of the location in question, and
• they would each move slightly from day to day and, in the temperate zones, markedly over the course of the year.

Reasonably accurate folk astronomy, such as is usually attributed to Stone Age peoples or later Celts, would arrive at east and west by noting the directions of rising and setting (preferably more than once each) and choosing as prime direction one of the two mutually opposite directions that lie halfway between those two. The true folk-astronomical definitions of east and west are "the directions, a right angle from the prime direction, that are closest to the rising and setting, respectively, of the sun (or moon). In geography, temperate latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. ... Stone Age fishing hook. ... Celts, normally pronounced //, is a modern term used to describe any of the European peoples who spoke, or speak, a Celtic language. ...

See also

• "The North", a sense of the term that refers to the Northern part of the world, as contrasted to the South
• Nordicity
• The world's most northern bagpipe orchestra, city, capital, zoo etc.
• Nordicism
• Septentrionalism
• Arctic